Happiness for Beginners

I did find it kind of funny that nature wasn't "pretty" enough, so they had to add in flowers artificially.

Ellie Kemper plays the school teacher divorcée Helen, who decides to get out of her comfort zone and go on a wilderness hike to find herself. She goes on an excursion package with a handful of other misfits. Filled with dry humor, this was anything but a sad film. Her brother's best friend Jake shows up, initially clashing with Helen but then finding some common ground.

Ellie Kemper's dry delivery was perfect and contrasted nicely with her genuine smile. She had wonderful chemistry with Luke Grimes, who played Jake, and Nico Santos, who played the character Hugh. Luke Grimes was wonderful in this film, warm and steadfast. Nico Santos stole scenes right and left.

I had set the bar low for this film and was genuinely surprised that I enjoyed it. There is some great camping humor and a sweet story along with some gorgeous wilderness backdrops. I think true romantics will like this film.

I'm starting to think no book adaptation should be less than 2 hours long. Especially a slow burn romance. There just wasn't enough time to flesh out their relationship. It felt forced and unearned (even more so because we only got one scene from their collective past to support Jake's undying love.)

And why did they age up the actors so far?! Ellie is almost 10 years older than the book character and Luke is almost 20 (!!) years older. It made some of their childish bickering even harder to watch.

The side characters were a hoot and well developed (but it came from a book so duh!) Something about the dialogue or maybe the pacing was just off. Maybe another 20-30 mins could have filled it out more.

This is a feel-good movie with a throwback feel, one in which the writers aren't trying to shock or offend you, or bombard you with whatever the latest work lesson is from the perpetually-offended or pretend-to-be offended calvary.

This movie is the rare family-friendly movie that will appeal to most ages regardless of background or culture. It employs universal themes of self love, childhood crushes, second chances, finding hope again, etc. It just gives you that tingly feeling in your stomach, the kind that makes you glad or at least not perturbed that you spent a couple hours watching this random flick.

Recommended for anyone who just wants an easy, feel-good experience. I think the movie did what it set out to do, nothing more, nothing less.

I cannot wait to read this book. At the 1.33 mark I went to Libby and tagged it, there was already a group of people that had a hold on it. I keep wondering how it is going to end.

I don't know what drew us to watch it, but what a great decision. My wife would say it was Luke Grimes, yea I get it. What I really liked about this movie, and can't wait to explore it in the book was that in the beginning everyone had their flaws and it looked as though there was going to be way too much stress. All of a sudden I realized how harmoniously they were with each other. Really made me smile.

The locale that this was shot was beautiful. The scenes of the group hiking in the meadows and on tree lines was very happy as they hiked in a single file line.

I'm glad we found this as it was released only 2 days prior to us seeing it.

I can now read the reviews and see what other views of this are. I hate reading reviews prior to seeing a movie. If you are one of those who read the reviews prior to watching a movie and you are reading this...by all means you need to watch this, hopefully you will not be disappointed.

I love Luke Grimes and watched this for him, and he is tender and sweet and lovable, but his co-lead is badly miscast with Kemper. She's great in other things, but she is not a believable love interest for Grimes and her character is irksome, at best, almost throughout, with only momentary glimpses of redemption. The screenplay, adapted from a book, fails to portray her character growth alongside him, fails to show enough of their shared moments prior to THE HIKE, and indeed seems to leave out a lot of the most inspirational stuff from the book itself. If this screenwriter had some childish concept that she was a better writer than the book author, let us disabuse her of that silly notion. I liked the supporting cast, but they weren't fleshed out enough. At the end of the day, it was pretty to watch but Kemper was mostly very grating, the romance was unbelievable, and there wasn't enough material regarding how to be happy for this to truly feel like a feel-good flick. Only one character who brought up 3 things we're grateful for even seemed like a vague reference to the title, the book, and presumably the entire point. It seems a shame, bc the setting was so lovely and you had Grimes ON SET as well. They should have just shot him walking around on those trails sharing his personal thoughts...that would have earned a higher rating.